Overall, Peru was a great month. I taught classes, I explored ancient ruins, and I got to slide down sand dunes. Unfortunately, I´m at an internet café so I cannot upload pictures. However, you can get an idea of my month by watching Raiders of the Lost Ark.
My main ministry in Peru was teaching English. We taught two classes a day: one at 3 and the other at 6. One really fun part about this ministry was that there was no lesson plan given to us so we got to completely design the curriculum ourselves. Usually, in the morning, we would come up with a new set of vocabulary and a new grammar topic to teach the students. For example, one day we might teach them food words and the verb, to be. We then would make a PowerPoint of these topics and design a game or activity to go along with them. The final product was a class that lasted one and a half to two hours.
I mentioned in my last blog that one struggle was accommodating every student’s needs. Some students knew no Spanish while others were near fluent. Some students were young while others were old. These differences made it troublesome to teach them all. For example, beginning students need to know that escuela means school while more advanced students need to know it is pronounced school and not eschool. While these were difficult problems to overcome, I feel like I gained great experience in meeting other’s needs. Whenever we teach anything whether it is Spanish or the Gospel, the people we are sharing with are coming from different places, and our success or failure of relaying that message to them hinges greatly on our ability to meet their needs. Everyone is different and thus responds differently to various teaching styles. That means it is up to the teacher to find the right teaching method for each individual student. Moving forward, I would like to incorporate this less in evangelism. Instead of using a cookie cutter presentation, I believe it would be more effective to shape my message in a way that will have the greatest influence on the individual. After all, I did not go on The World Race to talk about the philosophy of Jesus but the person.
Because of the lack of Internet in Apolo, Bolivia, my home for the next month, this will be my last time online until April. Have a great month!
